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Hitachi makes 4.5-inch, 720p 'Retina Display' for phones

updated 09:25 am EST, Fri February 11, 2011

by MacNN Staff

Hitachi intros 720p Retina Display style phone LCD

Hitachi today rolled out a display that it compared closely to Apple's Retina Display on the iPhone. The 4.5-inch LCD produces an extremely dense 1280x720 (720p) resolution which, at 329 pixels per inch, is exactly as sharp as Apple's 960x640, 3.5-inch screen. At these resolutions, it's close to the limit of what the human eye can see in pixels, Hitachi said.

Also like its Apple counterpart, the screen uses an IPS (in-plane switching) LCD panel that produces much better color and wider viewing angles than many mobile screens, at about 70 percent of the NTSC color gamut and a 160-degree viewing angle from any direction. The screen is about as bright as Apple's at about 500cd/m2 but produces a relatively high 1,100:1 contrast ratio.

The company didn't name clients for the display and won't necessarily make panels for Apple, but it recently said it was in talks with Foxconn, Apple's primary device manufacturer, to expand its business. Hitachi also said it planned to expand its smartphone LCD range and cater to the "small and medium" sizes that include phones and tablets.

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This screen would work to near perfection with a high-end iPod touch that targets on-the-go users who need a mobile office they can slip in a pocket and who use their cell phone enough that they prefer not to use it for other purposes.

Yes, some at Apple will say this complicates their product line-up. But when you have the market share that Apple has, it becomes dangerous not to fill almost every product niche. Any gap you leave, and the lack of a productivity touch is already a major gap, is an opening for competitors to move in and expand.

"If you have the market share that Apple has," but you want to be like everyone else, then, "it becomes dangerous not to fill almost every product niche." But, if you have the profitability that Apple has, it may be tempting and even dangerous, though not necessary, to fill almost every product niche, just for the sake of market share.

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